Most Helpful Customer Reviews
49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Read all the way through before passing judgement, July 17, 1999
This review is from: Getting to 'I Do' (Paperback)
A friend of mine is always encouraging me to go for what "cooks me". Well this book cooked me. First off, I am a guy and this book is definitely written to the female audience. So I had to keep transposing and interpreting as I went along. As I read it I found that I was having all kinds of reactions ranging from HECK NO! to DARN RIGHT! One of my first reactions was to a subheading in the first chapter DO YOU WANT IT ALL, OR ARE YOU WILLING TO COMPROMIXE TO GET HIM? that really pushed my buttons because one of the issues that I am working on in my life is not settling. What kept me going through the book were the examples and how many were true for my life. One of the best insights in the book for me was that rejecting someone can be an act of love. The author advocates either accepting or rejecting someone, both are acts of love. What is not an act of love is to tolerate someone. I think that many of my concerns with the book could have been alleviated if the material in the chapter FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES, which is at the end of the book, would have been placed at the beginning. For me, it sets the context in which the rest of the book is written rather than being a summary. It directly addresses many of the concerns that I had as I read the rest of the book. There is much of value in here, and even though it is written for women and I don't agree with everything in the book, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in improving relationships in their life simply because it is so thought-provoking.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life Changing, February 8, 2006
This review is from: Getting to 'I Do' (Paperback)
I'm what you call a serial monogamist. I have always had boyfriends. Some for a year, two years, etc. I have a great social life, I am successful and very attractive. I have never had a problem meeting, dating or having long and honest relationships with men. But, something happened in my late 20's. There I was, 27, single (for a minute), living in New York, working in the fashion industry and my clock went off-I wanted to find a partner for life, I wanted to find my husband. Now, this was very different than having a boyfriend, this was the big leagues. I didn't have any clue how I needed to go about this.
"Getting to I Do" catalogued various relationship scenarios, where the authors pointed out what worked and what didn't. I have to be honest, being a self-supportive "modern woman", I at first thought that the simplistic illustrations of male/female dynamics were really old-fashioned and that I might as well just talk it out with my grandmother. But, the book went way beyond just designating roles. For me it helped me to embrace the woman I was and to understand the relationship dynamic I wanted to have.
The book is terrific. I read it and applied it to my next relationship-someone I fell in love with and wanted to marry. I went through the "phases" as stated in the book and when it got down to the "negotiation" phase, my boyfriend wanted to move to France, with me. Great! But, not without an engagement. Turns out he was not ready to be married. It was a very painful to think about being without him. To have my dreams of being married to him dissolve. Fortunaltely, I had learned that I would be putting myself through so much more pain and anguish if I had up-rooted my life without any commitment other than being a great boyfriend. So, I let him go.
Thanks to "Getting to I Do", painful decisions became easy to navigate because I knew I wanted to find the person who wanted to commit to me, who would not stand to see me go without the emotional commitment I needed. Two years, and couple of boyfriends later, at age 34, I have found the man of my dreams and we are getting married in Septmeber.
"Getting to I Do" has tought me to never compromise my feelings and that you don't have to argue in order to communicate. I am really thankful and grateful that I recieved this book, it has been a blessing!!!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not completely idiotic, July 19, 2005
This review is from: Getting to 'I Do' (Paperback)
I usually totally despise self-help books of the 'how to get a man and keep him' type, but this one, although like most self-help books pretty silly, does contain some quite sensible advice.
Dr. Allen's theory is that everyone is either a 'feminine energy' person or a 'masculine energy' person. The masculine eneergy personis the leader who cherishes his mate, the feminine energy person is the follower who respects her leader. Dr. Allen doesn't think it matters whether the man or the woman is the leader or the follower (this makes her more flexible than the authors of most such books), but she maintains that you must have one of each, she doesn't think 'equal' relationships can work.
If you decided to be the 'feminine energy' woman (as she thinks most women will probably want to be) you let the man make the running, make the decisions (so long as they are not unethical, immoral, or something that can harm you or your children), and accept what he gives you graciously (that includes accepting things you might not particularly care for, like unwanted advice). You always give back less than you take, because a feminine energy woman must love herself more than her man.
One of her theories is that men want to marry virtupous women, so you must not sleep with a man until he has 'committed' to you, if you want to marry him. I don't know how true this is generally, but it certainly wasn't true in my own case, I slept with all the men I went out with before they'd 'committed' to me, but nevertheless some of them did want to marry me.
The part of this book I enjoyed the most is the chapter called 'Finding the Toad in every Prince' in which she describes how you cope when you discover the things about your prospective mate that you don't like. she says "There is a prince in every toad and a toad in every prince. But does someone fall in love with the prince part of a person? No way. They fall in love with the toad part. It's the idiosyncracies and weirdness that really endears someone to you, the part that makes you say "Oh, that's just him" and you love him anyway.
I tell women if they are still waiting for the perfect man - mentally, physically and emotionally he's not coming.
I feel that if you get someone who is 51 percent or better, keep him. That is to say, if you like more about the person than you don't, then go for it. Because odds are that if you don't, and you go out looking for a better deal elsewhere, you could end up with someone who is only 49% or worse."
I thought this was very sensible advice. One of the things I like about this book, is that Pat allen does not recommend a woman making herself into a doormat, or behaving as if only what the man wants matters, she believes that a naturally 'masculine energy' man will want to keep his wife happy and give her what she wants.
Not everything in this book made sense to me, but I did think some of the advice was quite sensible, and you might find it helpfull. It certainly didn't induce in me the feelings of nausea that other books of this kind have done.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
